The ability to overcome adversity is what can make or break a fighter and take them from being just a fighter to a legend. In the case of American Muay Thai fighter Kevin Ross, the adversity has never been his skill, abilities or drive, but instead an ACL injury that he suffered last year. He spent months rehabbing it after surgery and everything was built up for his comeback fight this January at Lion Fight 8. We spoke with Kevin back then about his comeback trail as well as the details of what he goes through in his personal life, what actually makes Kevin Ross tick and we were all treated to seeing Kevin’s successful comeback against Chris Kwiatowski.

It was the first step of many for Ross after coming back from an injury that would have stopped most fighters in the prime of their career and this Friday, live on AXS TV, Ross looks to once again enter the ring and take on a very game opponent in the UK’s Bernie Mendietta. Part of his last fight was not knowing exactly what Chris would bring to the table, and in the case of Mendietta he expects the same.

“I think that I know less about him than I did Chris,” he joked. “I’ve just really seen clips at this point, where with Chris I had at least seen a full fight or two. I know that he’s a tough guy, though, I know that he likes to brawl, so I know what I’m in for.”

If you follow Muay Thai in America, you know the name Kevin Ross. Hell, if you follow Muay Thai in general, you know Kevin Ross. Ross is one of the few American fighters over the past few years to really move outside of his comfort zone and go to Thailand and fight some of the best in the world. He has long been considered one of the best Thai fighters to come out of the US by fans and is set to make his return to the ring this Saturday night at Lion Fight 8 live on AXS TV.

Kevin is coming off of a pretty bad ACL injury that required surgery and months of rehabilitation that left him out of action for all of 2012, but that all ends this Saturday night as he squares off against Chris Kwiatkowski. LiverKick's Dave Walsh caught up with Kevin to discuss this fight, his rehabilitation and a whole lot more.

LK: So obviously it has been a while since you’ve fought, what have you missed the most when it comes to fighting?

KR: I mean, I’ve missed it all. Right after surgery I was in there on one leg punching the bag. I couldn’t stay away, man, I’d start getting depressed, like this is what I love to do, you know? Like the number one passion in my life and to be away from it for any period of time is just impossible. Especially the fighting. The fighting is like the peak of the sport, you know, with what I love to do it is the very top of that. To be away for as long as I have been, it’s been really hard. Even if it’s a month or two, I want to be in the ring. It’s been what, 15 months? It’s been rough.

LK: The ACL injury that you are recovering from could mean the end of a career for some fighters, but you seem to be healing up pretty well from it. What kind of obstacles did you have to overcome to heal up from the injury and the surgery?

KR: There’s a list! In the beginning one of the biggest hurdles I had to overcome was there was all of this scar tissue in my knee. We couldn’t get to the actual rehabilitation until they could get all of that broken up so I could bend my knee back all the way. The first few weeks were some of the most painful things I’ve had to go through in my life, I was like punching holes in the wall, man. Every time I went in there to rehab they had to break up the scar tissue and like smash my leg back down trying to get it to bed all of the way back. That was one of the hardest things. You know, not knowing if I was going to be able to make it back.

There were some days when I really was like, “I don’t know if I can do this anymore.” I knew that I could walk right now, but didn’t know if I could make it back. As soon as I was able to start training again I would look at all of the videos of my training that I did for my old fights, and was like damn dude, I don’t know if I can do that again. While I’m happy to be healthy and all of that, at the same time you realize how hard the sport is. You forget all of the stuff that you have to do. The ups and downs and stuff, you get kind of mixed feelings about it, but they are all temporary things. This is what I love to do and that is what got me through.

Lion Fight 11 on September 20th has already been shaping up to be a pretty incredible card, featuring Kevin Ross vs. Tetsuya Yamato and Nampon vs. Cosmo Alexandre, but now a third big fight has been added by the way of former Strikeforce champion and current Invicta FC champion Cristiane "Cyborg" Justino (formerly Santos). Cyborg is perhaps best known for her run in Strikeforce which included wins over Marloes Coenen as well as Gina Carano. She is just coming off of a win over Coenen at Invicta FC and it was announced today that she will return to Muay Thai under the Lion Fight banner on September 20th against Martina Jindrova of Holland.

Jindrova fights out of Brutal Gym in Holland with a record of 17-5 and looks forward to making her Lion Fight debut against a star like Cris Cyborg.

“I know Cyborg is a huge MMA star and this is a big challenge for me to fight an opponent like her,” said Jindrova. “She is very strong with hard punches, kicks and knees. But this is not an MMA, this is Muay Thai and she will be fighting me against my rules. I’m very proud to be on this historic Lion Fight 11 card and am ready to make a great knockout win for the fans.”

After this weekend's Lion Fight 10 event in Las Vegas Lion Fight is not going to make us wait that long for the next big Lion Fight event, as the next one is coming up quite soon, September 20th to be exact. Lion Fight 11 is set to go down on the 20th and will be at the Fremont Experience in Las Vegas, which is a big, open mall that happens to have an area for performances, the Third Street Stage. Tickets to the event will be handled by the neighboring hotel, The D.

As for the fights that are lined up, there isn't much official yet, but what has been announced is pretty exciting. The main event is to feature former Rajadamnern Stadium Welterweight Champion Nampon PK Muay Thai against a yet-to-be-named opponent, but getting Nampon aboard is pretty cool for Lion Fight. The co-main is a pretty big deal as Tetsuya Yamato will once again fight in the United States against American standout Kevin Ross. Ross is coming off of a loss to Matt Embree at Lion Fight 10, which will make the showdown between Yamato and Ross all the more interesting.

My god, this fight was just insanity. Cris Cyborg came into this fight as the favorite due to her MMA career, but Kickboxing fans knows who Jorina Baars is and knew that she'd cause some serious problems for Cyborg. Referee Tony Weeks had a hard time following the action and missed at least two knockdowns that should have been scored for Baars, one in round one, another in round four.

That being said, Baars dropped Cyborg in round one with a huge head kick after a push kick should have been considered a down. Jorina Baars put on the fight of her life, though. The spinning back kick that put Cyborg down in round five secured the fight for Baars in a fight that we were all fearing hearing the scorecards. Incredible fight and, c'mon, let's be honest here, this just makes Cris Cyborg vs. Ronda Rousey hype seem like a distant memory now.

Eddie Walker is a name that has been popping up more and more over the past few years, first in relation with K-1’s resurgence here in the United States, which equated to nothing but false starts for him. Finally Eddie Walker got his shot at the big time when Lion Fight called him up and offered him the fight with Joe Schilling. Schilling is one of the bigger names here in the United States muay thai scene and it was a fight that Walker had been looking to take for a while. The talk was that Eddie was out of his league, that he didn’t stand a chance, and it was no doubt a rough fight for him, until he knocked Joe out.

That set the scene for Walker signing with Glory and appearing in one of their Road to GLORY USA events, fighting in a one-night tournament with himself and Mike Lemaire as the big names. It was fate that evening as Walker cruised through the first few rounds of the tournament before the big main event between Lemaire and Walker went down, a tough fight between two of the better fighters at 187lbs in America with Lemaire walking away with the victory but Walker impressing Glory officials. It turns out that Steve Wakeling didn’t have an opponent for GLORY 5 London after Schilling and Marcus fell through, so he gladly accepted.

“I’m glad to be involved with Glory,” he stated while walking home from his day job as a manager at a recycling plant. “I guess that I impressed Cor and them with my last fight, so they offered me this fight and I was glad to take it.”

Walker divides his time between two careers and a family life, something that not many fighters have to do anymore, but Kickboxing and Muay Thai don’t pay like MMA does, which leaves him working a fulltime job, the same job that he has worked at for 13 years now. His schedule is grueling, to say the least, with him waking up at 4am each day to get in an early morning workout before he heads to work, gets out of work at 3pm and heads home to take care of his kids before his wife comes home. Then after his wife comes home it is straight to the gym where Walker works on honing his skills and preparing for his next fight before it is back home for dinner and rest before starting it all over again.

“It’s exhausting,” he laughed after explaining his day-to-day. “Muay Thai and Kickboxing just don’t pay enough for me to do this full time. MMA might pay that much, but I just don’t have the time to dedicate to the training to feel prepared for MMA right now. So yeah, for now I’m sticking with the job.”

If he were younger and had less responsibilities he might be able to do more in the way of training, but with a family to support he knows that he has to take the hard road. It doesn’t stop him from noticing how younger guys don’t understand what they have, though. “Man, I see these 19, 20 year old kids and they don’t work a fulltime job, they don’t have a family and they half-ass it in the gym. They show up for their fights and they are all out of shape and they look terrible. You gotta put in the work to be a fighter and most aren’t willing to do that.”

Family plays an important role in Walker’s life, as much as he loves fighting and would love to do it fulltime, he understands how important they are and that they come first for him. His wife, Ashley, plays a vital role in his fighting career as well. “My wife is a graphic designer,” he explained. “So she had this idea to take some photos from all of my knockouts and blow them up and hang them up around the house. So I have these ‘Knockout Walls’ all around, it’s kind of cool. She does a lot for me, my marketing and PR, she designed my website, too.”

When asked if he’d like to add Wakeling to his wall, he seemed happy at that prospect. “Oh absolutely, that would be great. Steve’s a great guy, though. I have nothing bad to say about him. I know that there is some promotional video floating around of me saying that I’m gonna knock him out and all of that, but I don’t like trash talk. This is a professional sport and I’m not here to do that crap.”

I was quick to point out that his previous opponent, Joe Schilling, is well known for his trash talk, which seemed like a sore subject for him, as was a rematch. “You know, I respect the guy. The way that fight even started was on Facebook. I made a post asking if I should watch the fight between Marcus and Schilling, two guys that I wanted to fight, or the fight between Tate and Sahak, two guys that I’m friends with. Well, Joe and I were Facebook friends at the time and he made a comment telling me to keep dreaming and whatever. So, you know [Andrew] Tate, right? Well, he and Joe went at it on there and it turned into this big thing.

“I just don’t like that trash talk stuff, we’re not in middle school anymore. We are professional fighters in a professional sport, there is no room for that. I found out that he had talked some trash on my wife as well, which you just don’t do. You don’t do that. I didn’t find that out until after the fight, either. I don’t want her to have to deal with that.”

So Walker goes into his fight with Steve Wakeling with a lot of respect for him and his skills as well as everyone else on the card. “Man, so many guys are fighting that I’m not sure that I’ll even show up on anyone’s radar for this fight. Even when I fought Schilling it was an arena full of Schilling fans or people asking me if I was the guy that was fighting Schilling. There are a ton of names on this card, I’ll just get lost in it,” he joked after I ran through the list of names on the card.

Even with his busy schedule, though, he still tries to make time for having some fun, or else he might go crazy from stress. The other day he posted a photo of him holding the new God of War game for PS3, which he laughed about. “That is my game, man. I don’t play a lot of games or anything, in fact, the last game that I played was the last God of War. But man, that is my game, I love them. I had to pick it up right away. Even then, I only got to play for like an hour last night after the kids went to bed, when my wife was just staring at me I knew that I had to stop.”

So while Eddie Walker might not have finished God of War: Ascension before his fight with Steve Wakeling at GLORY 5 London, let’s hope that he has the time after the fight to just sit back and relax for a while. On March 23rd Eddie Walker will meet Steve Wakeling in London on a stacked card headlined by Remy Bonjasky vs. Tyrone Spong.

Man, as if Cris "Cyborg" Justino fighting in Lion Fight wasn't weird enough, now her original opponent, Martina Jindrova, has pulled out of the fight this Friday due to an injury and Lion Fight has had to find a late replacement by the way of Jennifer Colomb. Here's the skinny from the statement they issued today;

Lion Fight CEO Scott Kent stated, “Martina Jindrova had to pull out on short notice due to injury, and fortunately we were able to sign Jennifer Colomb and get her to Las Vegas to take on Cyborg. We wish Martina well and hope she recovers quickly. We also thank Team Colomb for working with Lion Fight to give our fans this incredible fight Friday night between two female Muay Thai Champions.”

“I am disappointed that Martina got injured and had to withdraw, but I have trained very hard and am grateful that Jennifer Colomb has stepped up,” said Cris “Cyborg”. “Nothing changes - I am ready and will bring it to Colomb on Friday night.”

30-year old Jennifer Colomb has an incredible record of 10 wins with 10 knockouts and zero losses. The 5’9” French Muay Thai Champion trains with the renowned team Kan-Kra out of Bordeaux, France and is known for her aggression, strength and crushing KOs. Taking this fight with one week’s notice, Lion Fight 11 will mark the first time ever that Colomb has fought in America.

“It is short notice but I am ready and very excited to take this opportunity and fight for Lion Fight Muay Thai in America against one of the best female fighters in the world,” said Colomb.

Lion Fight 10 goes down tonight, live on AXS TV at 10PM Eastern time. It is set to feature two huge title bouts as well as some big names featured throughout the rest of the card. Lion Fight always finds a way to deliver and tonight should be no different, so make sure to tune in for some live muay thai action tonight, which of course LiverKick will be covering live.

Here is some video from the weigh-ins to give you a taste for what is in store for tonight.

Tonight at 10pm Eastern time Lion Fight 14 airs live on AXS TV! The event is headlined by Gregory Choplin vs. Marco Pique, with Cris Cyborg Justino vs. Jorina Baars serving as the co-main event that the MMA world is going to be watching very closely. Join us here on LiverKick for live results and coverage.

Former Bellator 115lbs Champion Zoila Frausto will make her Muay Thai debut this weekend on a Dennis Warner WCK Muay Thai event. The event goes down at 7pm on Saturday, February 15th from the Pechanga Resort and Casino. For those that live in the San Diego area or know how to dial in their satellite dish to pick up regional Fox Sports networks the event will air on Fox Sports San Diego live.

Here's hoping to a good showing from Zoila Frausto, who trains out of the CSA Gym in Dublin, California, and hopefully we see yet another star MMA fighter turn to Kickboxing and Muay Thai as a viable path as there are more and more options out there in the wild right now, from Lion Fight to GLORY. If you are in the area or get Fox Sports San Diego the WCK event looks like something definitely worth checking out.